


I (don't) care

by Captainmintyfresh



Series: The punchline [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Soulmate AU, i don't know what this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 00:25:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13492962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captainmintyfresh/pseuds/Captainmintyfresh
Summary: The companion piece to 'Almost' that soulmate AU I did for Thiamweek(Literally wrote in half an hour so i'm sorry)





	I (don't) care

Theo loved the idea of soulmate as a child. Growing up next to Stiles saw to that. Months of listening to him talk about how one day he was going to find some writing on his wrist and remember it from something Lydia said that. Weird and ridiculous tales he'd found that were so painfully romantic he and Scott could do little but roll their eyes at his antics even as they felt a little buzz of hope tingling in their chests.

He took to the ideas of soulmates like a drug. Getting high on Stiles' tales and praying that one day the words would show on his skin and he'd find someone. Scott never did seem to get it, neither did Stiles. Stiles liked the soulmates thing because he hoped that it would be Lydia. Scott just...didn't seem to care too much but to Theo. For Theo it was a life line, it was the knowledge that if he was lucky there was someone out there for him. There was someone that he would always come first too. To someone he'd be the prize not a participation medal.

And maybe it was pathetic, because he had friends, he had parents and a sister but he was never important, at least, not enough. Tara was the prodigy, the apple of their parents eye and Theo paled in comparison. Doing well didn't matter when you had the first child doing perfectly.

And Scott and Stiles had each other, more than they had him, he was the third wheel. He knew that, accepted it, was fine with it even, because they were brothers and he was just a friend.

But one day he'd come first to someone, and that...that was something that Theo clung onto through every story about soulmates, that some day he'd get his turn. Some day he'd be something special to someone and so he strived to make himself special. Make himself something someone would be proud to have.

And then, at age nine, that dream vanished just as quickly as it came when Theo realised he'd never find his soulmate. One sentence, that was all he'd ever have to go on. One stupid 'Can we get ice cream' was all he'd ever know about his soulmate because before he could really process the burn in his arm and the pointless little words he was being rushed away with the doctors who said they could make him something.

And they did. He'd known just how right they'd been when they said they could make him something when he woke up with fangs and claws and the beat of his own sisters heart pumping in his chest. When his eyes, blurred with tears from the pain had moved to his wrist, to where he'd seen the one little sentence before he'd passed out and found it marred with scars.

The scars weren't like his mothers. It wasn't a neat little scrawl of writing, heartbreaking and painful but proof that you'd had something special. Instead it was messier, a deep forever pink patch creeping up his forearm from where the dread doctors had sliced and burnt away at his words until even his newly acquired enhanced healing wouldn't be able to fix it.

He'd hated them for it, he'd screamed and cried and begged to know _why_ because that had been his. His one person who would want him.

He didn't get answers. Not for a long time, not until he'd figured it out himself. Emotions were dangerous. Emotions got you hurt, they put the doctors at risk, they put everything at risk. They were a flaw, a flaw that they wanted to fix and maybe they'd already cut out his heart but that wouldn't matter when he had another one on his wrist sending him little message every day to remind him that he was human.

It would still burn, every day, like the words were still there, buried deep beneath the ugly scar unable to break through reminding him that somewhere out there was someone the universe thought was his perfect match.

He wasn't sure when it started, when he'd curl up in the corner trying to block out the screams of the victims and hide the tears leaking in burning trails down his cheeks.

When he'd stop telling himself not to cry because it didn't help, it wouldn't turn the clock back, it would just make them mad. It would just make him a failure, he wasn't meant to feel. He wasn't. He didn't.

And so he talked to the scar instead. Sometimes, when the sounds were too much and he needed to pretend that maybe, somehow, he could still find them, that there was still enough humanity in him that he even deserved to find them.

He'd tuck his knees up to his chest with just enough room to slide his wrist between chest and thigh so he could see the ugly pink scar and he'd talk fingers ghosting over it like maybe, somewhere, his soulmate would feel the trail his finger left across their own wrist.

Sometimes he'd talk until his throat was raw. Sometimes he'd talk until he couldn't breathe and sometimes he wouldn't say anything, because god they didn't need to know what he was saying. They didn't need to know that the doctors killed an eleven year old that day, a girl that Theo had helped bring to them.

They didn't need to know that every time he opened his mouth to admit something to the stupid scar as if someone actually cared what he said it cracked him open just a little bit more. That it brought him that much closer to being something even the dread doctors wouldn't want.

He talked to the stupid scar until they'd found him doing it and he'd been taught not to. When the doctors had shown him how to do what they do, when he'd had a scalpel slapped in his palm and cut open a boy of thirteen with shaking hands and the mutter of 'why do they always scream?' because it was useless, screaming didn't do anything. It didn't help them, the tears seeping down their faces like rivers didn't help them, he realised that years ago. They were pointless, all they showed was that the doctors were the ones winning.

Because he knew what they meant now by emotions are weakness. He knew that letting someone else see them was just pathetic. Unless they were going to help you what was the use of them? To embarrass yourself? To spend your last few moments begging and pleading with three doctors and a child who couldn't distinguish you from the last god knows how many chimera's

And so he talked less, when his wrist would burn each day he'd barely feel it. Physical pain was something he knew. He could make someone twice his age scream in agony, he could make someone three times his age break by hurting who they cared about rather than laying a finger on them.

Physical pain would fade, like the flare of his wrist as words went unseen beneath an ugly pink scar but emotional pain. That was the one that broke people. That was the one that really made them scream, that left them broken and crying and begging for not even themselves but for someone else.

He'd fit in, if he'd just stop caring, if he'd just start asking the right questions he could make himself fit.

“How come bloods always so warm?” He asked because it was and it shouldn't be. The new chimera was going to die and death was meant to be cold, unfeeling. It wasn't meant to leave the phantom burn of the sunlight Theo had been missing for so long coating his fingers in a sickening crimson like the perfect sunrise.

“Life is warmth.” The surgeon had said and Theo had continued to cut, he'd plunged the scalpel deeper and let his hands be dozed in the warmth, he'd let it creep up, up, up, until his scar was no longer a pink but a stark red and his skin felt so cold beneath it that he knew he'd died when he'd gotten his new heart.

And he'd smiled, because the dead don't feel, the dead don't have emotions, they don't care about the blood staining their hands or the pain in their wrists.

The dead don't have soulmates but they do belong in graveyards. And looking down at the blood staining his hands and hearing the rumble of clicks as the surgeon moved the newest body away Theo knew that was exactly where he was.

He remembered it. What it was like to care, what it was like to look at it each morning and pray that it would have healed overnight and he'd get to know his soulmate, one sentence at a time, he remembered what it was like to feel like maybe there was someone who cared getting his words painted across their wrist, that maybe they'd want to find him. He remembered when he cared about the people strapped to tables. He remembered when he cared about their screams.

He remembered Stiles as he talked about soulmates and his heart would flutter thinking of who his would be. His fingers trailed over the scar, ugly and bumpy beneath the soft pads of his fingers.

“It's getting harder to care.” He lied because that heart was long gone, the heart that cared. The heart that thought maybe he could be worth something to someone. He had a new one and he'd pretend it pumped oil and that when his bones would break beneath the doctor's cane they'd just click like cogs because he was a dread doctor. Younger and learning but he was where he was wanted. He was needed. He was their first chimera, their one success.

And he didn't care, not anymore. The next step was learning to lie.

“It's getting harder to care.” He repeated, feeling the telltale lying skip of his stolen heart and he said it again, and again, and again, until he could say it until his heartbeat was steady and the blood on his hands didn't even make him wince.

 


End file.
